Created the 21th of october 2002 at Espace Malraux of Chambéry (France)

Mammame is a choreography created in 1985 and since then it has travelled all over the world. Now it has become part of the repertoire and has been revived and recreated on various occasions. Several generations of audiences have found something in it.

Jean-Claude Gallotta is still scratching the itch of childhood. He puts the words “my childhood runs in my knees which have grown up“ into the mouth of Yvan Vaffan and he wanted to dig deeper into this idea of things being passed on from one generation to the next by adapting his choreography for an audience of children, in a version entitled “L’Enfance de Mammame” (The Childhood of Mammame).

Adapting a choreographic piece for a young audience does not mean oversimplifying it, or even simplifying it at all. It actually means giving the show a narrative form through which children can understand it better. Children like to be told stories in dance as well. So, in order to turn the tribulations of the Mammame tribe into a story, their adventure needed a name, the dancers had to become identifiable characters and there had to be a storyteller-agitator (Jean-Claude Gallotta himself) to unravel the thread of the story on stage.

So L’Enfance de Mammame is the story of a group of Mammames who lived inside the theatre and had a passion for the projector. They all huddled together underneath it to get warm. “One day, quite mysteriously”, says Gallotta the storyteller, “the projector went out and disappeared. So the Mammames had to face the cold and a tremendous sadness. And yet there is a solution: legend has it that if they create lots of different dances the projector will return. The Mammames come onto the stage and cheerfully head off on their choreographic quest, in search of the lost projector. The imp Schiotto introduces them as he sings and sets the dance of the Mammames-children in motion.”

“Ocht-oussil!” concludes the choreographer in the Mammames’ own language. Is there any need to translate this? Dance is big enough to make itself understood.

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